The foundational instruments of the modern human rights framework were negotiated in the 1950s, as many colonies were achieving independence. North African states gave support to the human rights treaties, but for more than a decade the discourse of human rights was controlled by the state. This lecture will trace the spread of human rights ideas to and through North Africa with particular attention to the decade of the 1980s, when a local human rights movement flowered in the Maghreb.

Susan Waltz is both a scholar and a practitioner in the field of international human rights. She began her career as an area specialist, focusing on the North African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. Over the past twenty years she has conducted research on North African regional politics and the local human rights movement. More recently, her research has focused on the historical origins of international human rights instruments and the political processes that produced them. She is co-author of the website Human Rights Advocacy and the History of International Human Rights Standards, hosted by The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.